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Apparently, as a student told me today as she turned in her final, some of the students here have nicknamed me "Dracula."

Not because I suck blood (I asked) or because I am inherently nocturnal (true but apparently unknown and irrelevant) but even more strangely because, as my student said, "you are white" and because "you know so much about history."

That last one got me until the student explained that vampires know a lot about history because they are eternal...or something like that. I guess logic is not the key here.

The real issue is that the nickname they gave me is "Dracula," which is not a very cool nickname. What about Nosferatu?

Makes me almost nostalgic for the days when I started as a fresh-faced newly minted prof and they called me "Dr. Yummy." Almost.

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One of my favorite things to do here has been to visit Buddhist temples and Buddhas. If you have been visiting this blog with any frequency you have probably figured that out. No shortage of them here, luckily. Shake a stick and there is a temple worth visiting and a Buddha worth admiring.

I have some Buddha images that haven't yet appeared on Nunal I have been meaning to post, so here is a surfeit of big Buddhas in Seoul. If I really get a chance I will post some photos of myriad little Buddhas.

Well, maybe just one photo of little Buddhas. This is from Samseongsa (there are two sets of these flanking the main Buddha image:

Now on to the big Buddhas

This one is actually in our neighborhood, just north of where we live on a parallel street, at the base of a mountain that is really one of the foothills of Bukhansan. As I have developed a more complete understanding of the bus system (which is entirely in Korean, unlike the subway, so a bit mysterious), I have a new appreciation …